When Sarah Myers was a sophomore business major at NC State University, she needed to fulfill a science credit. Following the advice of some student friends, she signed up for Intro to Beekeeping (Entomology 101). From day one, she fell in love with bees. She was fascinated by their ecosystem, how the hives work together, and all the things that these little insects can do together as a whole. After the first day of class, she shared her excitement with her dad, Al, who revealed that in years past, he kept bees. He said, “You know what, maybe we should do this together.” He began auditing the class with Sarah and together they learned/relearned beekeeping.
At this point, Sarah and her dad were just interested in a fun thing to do together. But when they attended a weekend crash course through Wake County Beekeepers, they won the door prize—a beehive—and this changed everything. Knowing this hive would arrive at their home, and that they would have to do something with it, propelled them into action.
Sarah explains: “We basically just got a starter box, and it had a queen and about 30,000 bees. ‘Go forth and conquer’ was kind of what we decided to do after that. One hive became four, four hives became eight, then 16. Now we try to manage about 20 hives throughout the year. That’s as many as we can handle, because my father and I both work full-time jobs. And this is still just a hobby-business.”
The whole family joined Sarah and Al in this hobby-business called The Pleasant Bee. From working with the hives to bottling and labeling the honey, Sarah’s sister, brothers, stepmother, husband and her two children are all involved.
Sarah went on to take enough classes to earn a minor in entomology and a major in business. She is a certified Journeyman Beekeeper. She intends to get her Master Beekeeper certification, which is a test administered through the state consisting of both written and practical application.
Fascinating Bee Facts
Bees are, indeed, fascinating insects, and there is much to learn about them. There are three different types of bees in the hive: the queen, the worker, and the drone.
The queen’s only job is to lay eggs. She will lay about 2,000 eggs per day during the spring and summer months. On average, a queen lives 1 to 2 years.
Drones are the male members of a beehive. Their primary function is to mate with the queen bee. By passing on genes from different drones, male bees contribute to the genetic diversity of the hive. They also help with maintaining the temperature of the hive. Due to their large size, they are effective at generating heat. During hot days, they flap their wings creating airflow that helps cool the hive.
The primary population are workers, who are all female. They have a very short lifespan, just 4 to 6 weeks. Each week of their lives they have a different job based on their age. For example, a nurse bee, for a certain period of time only, has glands in her forehead that produce royal jelly, a high-protein substance that is fed to the baby bees and to the queen. After that, they become cleaner bees who clean up the hive, throwing the dead bees out. The workers’ bodies tell them when to move on to making wax, which they produce through a gland in their stomach. By around 4 weeks of age, they are mature enough to go out and fly. On average, each worker bee can only produce one-twelfth of a teaspoon of honey in its lifetime. To make 1 pound of honey, bees must tap two million flowers.
As noted, a worker bee lives only 4 to 6 weeks, working herself to death. Sarah explains, “Their life span depends on how hard they fly. For example, if a worker bee must fly 5 miles a day, then maybe she won’t make it to live 6 weeks. But if they could stay within a 1-mile radius every day and find plenty of food, perhaps they will make it the full 6 weeks.” She adds, “And that is why it’s so important for people to get involved by having a garden, whether it’s vegetables, herbs, or just planting flowers that are attractive to pollinators for their food source.”
Bees are the only insect in the world that can make food for humans, because they’re able to convert nectar, which has no nutritional value, into nutritious honey. They have two stomachs, one for general digestion and the other for honey production. In their honey stomach, there are chemical enzymes that help break down the glucose and sucrose and convert nectar into honey. When they get back to the hive, they regurgitate nectar from their honey stomach and put it inside the honeycomb cells. Using evaporation methods, they fan their wings to reduce the water content so the sugars thicken into honey. When the honeycomb cell is full, they cap it off with beeswax, sealing it for later consumption.
Bees cannot fly in the rain; the water makes their wings too heavy to fly. They also stop flying when the temperature drops below 55 degrees; their muscles seize up rendering them unable to move themselves to warmer areas. In the winter, bees cluster around the queen inside the hive and remain warm and dry.
Beekeeping As a Hobby
North Carolina is one of the largest hobby-beekeeper states, and a good place to learn beekeeping. The North Carolina State Beekeepers Association has a certification program where you can learn different aspects of beekeeping such as best practices, pest management, and all the integrated care to keep your bees healthy and thriving. And their program goes from beginner to certified journeyman and master level beekeeper.
When you purchase a hive, you can buy it as a nuc (short for nucleus colony), which is a smaller version of a standard beehive, about half a hive. Beekeepers use a nuc as a starter colony. It consists of a queen bee, about 20-30,000 worker bees and drones, brood frames, honey frames and some stored honeycomb. You put this into a wooden box with frames on which the queen can build out the honeycomb. The queen puts out a pheromone that lets her workers know where their home is, so they go out to find food, nectar and pollen and come back every day.
Sarah explained what it takes to manage a beehive: “It can be as much or as little work as you want. The work during the spring and summer is making sure they have plenty of food, meaning nectar and pollen. In the hot summer months when the flowers are not blooming, you may have to supplement their food with sugar and water. And then going into fall and winter months, you may need to supplement their food with some pollen. One of the things you learn from a certified program is how to assess the health of the queen and the workers. Is the queen laying enough eggs? Is she moving around? Do you notice any viruses or diseases that the bees may be carrying? Or, another method of caring for a hive is to just have the hive in your backyard and let them do their own thing.”
How Can We Help the Bee Population?
I asked Sarah what we can do to help the bee population, and she advises that the easiest thing you can do is to plant flowers. You could plant a vegetable garden, herbs, a bush, or a tree. Even a small flowerpot makes a difference. Your local nursery will be able to direct you to the pollinator plants.
Some people say they want to help but don’t want bees in their yard where they might get stung. In that case, placement is key—plant pollinators toward the back of the yard away from traffic areas. Bees are docile, but if they need to defend themselves, they will use their stinger. Worker bees are the only ones who have a stinger. The stinger is barbed and gets stuck in a person’s skin and the bee dies.
The month of June is National Pollinator Month, dedicated to educational activities, planting pollinator-friendly gardens, and other initiatives to support pollinating species. The National Wildlife Federation has special events and resources to help people get involved.
About The Pleasant Bee Farm
Sarah and her family have been operating The Pleasant Bee Farm for about 17 years now. They try to reuse every component possible from the hive. She and her dad bottle everything. They have a couple of different sizes of honey, and a local soap company makes their soap, lotion and lip balm using their honey and wax. They make candles from their wax, too. Located nearby in Apex, The Pleasant Bee sells their products through their online store (https://thepleasantbee.com/shop) and at The Vine in Fuquay-Varina as well as at the Midtown Farmers Market in North Hills, Porter Farms in Willow Springs, Lucky 32 restaurant in Cary, and other locations. Sarah says, “It’s really just a fun hobby for my dad and me, and the whole family.”
